The World Wide Web, or WWW, is a hypertext information and communication system used on the worldwide network of computers commonly known as the Internet. WWW operates according to a client-server model using a HyperText Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”). HTTP provides user access to files using a standard page description language known as HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”). HTML is an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (“SGML”), which is an international standard (ISO 8879) for text information processing. Files that are accessed using HTML may be provided in many different formats including text, graphics, images, sound, and video. HTML provides basic document formatting and allows a web developer to specify links to “web servers” and files. These links are specified using an addressing scheme commonly known as the Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). By specifying a URL, an end-user or web server is able to access web pages formatted according to HTML from a web server connected to the WWW. Entering a URL often requires the input of a long string of characters. To assist the end-user, a bookmarking facility is typically provided in web browsers, allowing the end-user to save a URL for a web page being viewed. The end-user is then able to later access the bookmarked web page by selecting the bookmark from the web browser.
Over time, a web developer or data owner may wish to alter the organization or structure of web pages at a given web site. In the process, frequently, the address or URL of the web pages may also change. Consequently, when an end-user tries to access a web page for which the URL has changed, the end-user may receive an error message and be unable to connect to the desired web page. This often results in frustration and end-user dissatisfaction with the web site.
To address this problem, various solutions for redirecting an outdated URL request to a new URL have been proposed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,338,082 discloses redirecting an end-user's web browser to a domain name registration site using the Domain Name System (“DNS”) if the specified URL does not exit. As known to those skilled in the art, the DNS is a system which translates domain names to Internet Protocol addresses. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,660 also refers to translation within the DNS service. However, redirection through the DNS of more than a few web pages may be cumbersome and administratively difficult to set up.
Other proposed solutions have focused on redirection on the web server itself. For example, it is known that a web server configuration file in web server software may be used to redirect a request for a web page from an old URL to a new URL. However, redirecting pages at the web server configuration level may require extensive involvement of a web server administrator, which may be inconvenient for both the web server administrator and the data owner, if they are not one and the same. In any event, if there are significant changes to a web page data structure, and many web pages must be redirected as a result, using the web server configuration file to redirect each web page may prove to be quite impractical. Also, a web server configuration file may not permit specific targeting or sufficient flexibility in mapping old URLs to new URLs as desired by the data owner.
Thus, what is needed is a solution for redirecting web page requests which overcomes at least some of the drawbacks or limitations of known solutions as presented above.